Ideas to Get Consumers to Buy Sustainable Products

Every year more sustainably produced products hit store shelves yet consumer uptake on these products isn’t as strong as it should be. Sure, there are increasing sales overall but the amount of people who are buying environmentally-concious products isn’t increasing at a fast enough rate.Over at Fast CoExist a writer proposes six ways to convince consumers to buy greener products.

5: SHOW, DON’T TELL

It’s unreasonable to assume that consumers will translate sustainable attributes into benefits that matter to them. More marketers need to visibly demonstrate how green products make a real difference to people’s lives. For instance, at Plum Organics, the packaging does the talking. Not only does it contain some of the healthiest baby food available, but its stand-up pouch, secure spout and rounded edges give parents a safer and more convenient “self-serve” option, while kids get more control over their eating experience. Benefits like these drive repeat business. You can’t say that about a glass jar.

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54% of Consumers Care About Product Sustainability

Some of you might read this and think “only half of shoppers care?” while some of you might read this and think “that’s more than I thought!”. What I find most captivating is that this statistic is from a survey done by marketers to find out if people truly care about the environmental sustainability of a product. Just think, twenty, or even ten years ago people would’ve laughed at you if you mentioned how bad some products are for the environment.

Today half of shoppers will choose the more environmental product and now 95% of shoppers are willing to shop green. Here’s the press release on the survey.

“We found that for most shoppers, sustainable considerations are an important tie breaker when deciding between two otherwise equal products and they are a driver in product switching,” said Brian Lynch, GMA director of sales and sales promotion. “But it’s not enough to just put green products on the shelf. We have to better educate consumers and leverage in-store communication to make the sale.”

Most shoppers surveyed, 95 percent, are open to considering green products, 67 percent of shoppers looked for green products, only 47 percent actually found them and 22 percent purchased some green products on their shopping trip, highlighting the need for better shopper marketing programs to close the gap. Sometimes concerns about product performance and credibility of the environmental claims are the reasons shoppers opt not to buy green products, but more often communication and product education are the biggest obstacles. The study also found that a significant minority of committed and proactive green shoppers will pay a premium for sustainable products; however, the larger potential population of shoppers that lean toward green want price and performance parity for sustainable products because it is not their dominant purchase driver.

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